Fight for the right

Cornyn need not pander to extremists because of an extreme challenger.

Copyright 2013: Houston Chronicle

Updated 9:48 am, Friday, December 13, 2013

Photo: Rodolfo Gonzalez, MBO

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U.S. Sen. John Cornyn speaks to supporters during his re-election campaign kickoff rally last month in Austin.

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn speaks to supporters during his re-election campaign kickoff rally last month in Austin.

Photo: Rodolfo Gonzalez, MBO

Fight for the right

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U.S. Rep. Steve Stockman's last-minute decision to challenge U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in next year's Republican primary might be considered a win-win in some circles. The Senate veteran doesn't get to waltz to re-election without a fight, and that's good for Texas, although Stockman will force the fight so far off the right screen that it likely will require some sort of newfangled periscope to follow it.

Clear winners, as we suggested last week, are residents of the 36th Congressional District. To paraphrase a former Republican president no doubt too progressive for Stockman's taste, they won't have a less-than-serious congressman to kick around any more. We hope their choices in 2014, Republican and Democrat, will be more interested in representing the district than in taking absurdist shots at President Obama and hiding his own campaign finances.

Cornyn was crab-walking rightward even before Stockman's entry - "second-most conservative senator in America," he proclaims - and we understand why, but it's disheartening to see longtime elected officials feeling the need to pander to the most extreme elements of their party. Of course, he's not the only craven candidate this cycle; most Republicans are scuttling rightward as fast as they can. (Democrats don't have such a problem, since they remain an irrelevance in most statewide races.)

Consider Dan Branch, a respected GOP state representative from Dallas whose moderate positions and pragmatic approaches to governance frequently align with those of Speaker Joe Straus. Running for attorney general, Branch is portraying himself as the most conservative candidate in the race (a laughable claim), a raging anti-Obaman, a tea-party firebrand and an anti-abortion crusader. We haven't seen such an extreme re-branding effort since the late Phyllis Diller's plastic surgeries.

One elected official who could help Cornyn avoid such campaign absurdities in his race against Stockman is the man who inspired the mainstream GOP's right-fright, one Ted Cruz. Although the junior senator from Texas is the vice-chairman of the Republican Senatorial Committee, the body that's supposed to protect incumbent members of his party, he has announced that he won't be making endorsements in the race.

That's unfortunate. Cruz endorsing Cornyn would be good for Cruz. It would allow him to suggest that he's not the Senate's most assiduous self-aggrandizer, the reputation he's established during his brief Senate tenure. More important, Cruz standing up for Cornyn would signal to Texas voters that nominating a candidate as un-serious as Stockman would be bad for Texas, bad for the nation, bad for the Republican Party.